Caring Futures?

Authors

  • Hege Tapio Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7220-4158
  • Ingvil Hellstrand Department for Caring and Ethics, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Stavanger, Norway

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i28.580

Keywords:

caring futures, speculative art, embodiment, enhancement, Crispr, bioethics, parasitism.

Abstract

How do we understand care, humanity, and vulnerability under new technological regimes? Do concepts of care change with increasing technology use? With these questions in mind, we curated the art exhibition Caring Futures at Sølvberget gallery in Stavanger, Norway in autumn 2022. Produced as part of the interdisciplinary research project “Caring Futures: Developing Care Ethics for Technology-Mediated Care Practices” at the University of Stavanger, the exhibition became a creative site for articulating and visualising questions of future care and the entanglement between technological and social aspects of contemporary healthcare regimes, particularly in a Nordic welfare state. In this article, we introduce the exhibition and highlight some of the art projects that specifically grapple with ethical issues in ageing as well as the topic of enhancement, genetics, and bioethics. Our aim is to discuss how technology changes how we relate to our bodies, and our perception or tolerance of what is normal or expected. Care under new technological regimes holds the power of making us want to acquire the desirable, of improvement, but so far, the knowledge of social and individual costs is scarce. Thinking with and through art is a way of generating new knowledges of what is at stake for questions of health, care, and welfare in our times.

Author Biographies

Hege Tapio, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

Hege Tapio is an artist and curator based in Stavanger, Norway, currently pursuing artistic research as a Phd fellow at FeLT – Futures of Living Technologies at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). Her interest in emerging media interconnecting art, new technology, and science led to the foundation in 2001 of i/o/lab – Center for Future Art, where she established and curated Article - Biennial for Electronic and Unstable Art. Hege is involved as curator in the research project Caring Futures: (QUALITECH) at the University of Stavanger, part of the team of NOBA – Norwegian Bioart Arena, located at Vitenparken Campus Ås, Norway, and Associate artist in the Metabolic Arts Gathering series of the Copenhagen Medical Museion.

Ingvil Hellstrand, Department for Caring and Ethics, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Stavanger, Norway

Ingvil Hellstrand is Associate Professor in Gender Studies at the Department for Caring and Ethics, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Stavanger, Norway (UiS). Her research interests are storytelling practices and knowledge production, science fiction, and the posthuman. Ingvil is currently involved in the interdisciplinary research project “Caring Futures: Developing Care Ethics for Technology-Mediated Care Practices” as lead of the work package “Imaginaries of the Care Robot”, fusing science fiction as method, care and technologies of care, and posthuman ethics. Ingvil is a member of The posthumanities hub, and a founding member of The Monster Network.

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Published

15.10.2023

How to Cite

Tapio, H., & Hellstrand, I. (2023). Caring Futures?. AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (32), 41–51. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i28.580